The City of Miami has taken to federal court to undo a 15-year-old legal agreement that protected homeless people from undue arrest and harassment by the authorities.
The city is concerned the homeless population is stunting downtown's growth, and want the courts to alter a 1988 settlement that bars Miami police from arresting homeless people for such "involuntary, harmless acts'' without first offering them an alternative location to lay their head.

and

Police argue that the homeless are scaring not only families, but workers.
Fans pouring into the American Airlines Arena for Heat games, meanwhile,
are being met with more aggressive panhandlers blocking sidewalks and relieving themselves in public.

....the city acceded to the so-called Pottinger Settlement back in 1988
because the ACLU made a compelling case that police were abusing the city's most vulnerable citizens.
Back then, police routinely rounded up homeless, dumped their belongings in the trash and charged them with loitering.

Sounds like a big problem, no?
But get this:

What's more, advocates say that settlement has decreased the homeless population from 6,000 to just 351 -- with many of those 351 only still on the streets because they refuse assistance.
The act makes it illegal to arrest any homeless person, unless they refuse shelter and board.

Originally the Cyprus gov't said it wanted 7 billion euros, and it closed the Laika bank, claimed ALL deposits over 100,000 Euros, and left many thousands of bank workers unemployed, took their pensions, plus they still have to pay loans to the bank for bank bonds they were coerced into buying.
NOW....

The cost of bailing out Cyprus has swollen to euro 23 billion ($30 billion), with the crisis-hit country having to take on the lion’s share of the measures needed to avoid bankruptcy, according to a draft document by the country’s international creditors.

The draft document, obtained by The Associated Press Thursday, says the country will have to find 13 billion euros ($17 billion) — an increase on the 7 billion euro contribution agreed during the country’s chaotic bailout talks last month. The money will be raised by imposing heavy losses on large bank deposits, levying additional taxes, privatizations and a part-sale of the central bank’s gold reserves.

couple notes here:
First, 7 Billion and 13 billion only add up to 20 billion ( a minor point of addition)

MORE important...if the original Cyprus share was 7 billion, and the troika would then give Cyprus 10 billion,
why does Cyprus need to raise 23 billion?
Just raise 3 billion more to make the 10 billion, right?

Unless, of course, the plan was to grab as much wealth from the people as it could.

Anyone who has kept up with the bailouts in Europe has noticed the pattern of the troika demanding MORE money
in repeated from the countries.

Of course WE saw that slippery slope during Bush warrantless spying...but it has really increased in the last 8 years.

Newly disclosed documents prepared by IRS lawyers says that Americans enjoy "generally no privacy" in their e-mail, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages, and similar online communications -- meaning that they can be perused without obtaining a search warrant signed by a judge.

An IRS 2009 Search Warrant Handbook obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union argues that "emails and other transmissions generally lose their reasonable expectation of privacy and thus their Fourth Amendment protection once they have been sent from an individual's computer." The handbook was prepared by the Office of Chief Counsel for the Criminal Tax Division and obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

Mayflower, AR, April 9 – As spill estimates are being revised to over 300,000 gallons, we have been hearing very disturbing reports about Exxon’s continued focus on PR damage control rather than actual damage control. At every turn they are attempting to obfuscate the truth even if it means endangering the health of workers, residents and the ecosystem.
We already reported how they power-washed bitumen into a nearby wetland and then paid local sheriffs to keep cameras away, hiding the problem at the expense of the local watershed and everyone who relies on it for drinking water, hunting and fishing.

During the day, workers and police are not wearing masks. We have spoken to several workers who had no idea that they were dealing with tar sands bitumen instead of crude oil. None were willing to talk further or go on the record.

At night, according to reports from several residents, workers wear full protective suits.

WASHINGTON — Mortgage servicers tied to the independent foreclosure review settlement will begin sending the first wave of $1.2 billion in checks to troubled borrowers on Friday, federal regulators said.

Borrowers who receive a payment from the settlement can still take any other action against their mortgage servicer.
The servicers also cannot ask borrowers to waive any legal claims when accepting the payment.

A BILL
To address the concept of ‘‘Too Big To Fail’’ with respect to certain financial entities.

1 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
2 tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

3 SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.4 This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Too Big to Fail, Too
5 Big to Exist Act’’.

6 SEC. 2. REPORT TO CONGRESS ON INSTITUTIONS THAT
7 ARE TOO BIG TO FAIL.8 Notwithstanding any other provision of law. not later
9 than 90 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the
10 Secretary of the Treasury shall submit to Congress a list 2
GRA13102 S.L.C.
1 of all commercial banks, investment banks, hedge funds,
2 and insurance companies that the Secretary believes are
3 too big to fail, which shall include, but is not limited to,
4 any United States bank holding companies that have been
5 identified as systemically important banks by the Finan-
6 cial Stability Board (in this Act referred to as the ‘‘Too
7 Big to Fail List’’).

8 SEC. 3. BREAKING-UP TOO BIG TO FAIL INSTITUTIONS.9 Notwithstanding any other provision of law, begin-
10 ning 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, the
11 Secretary of the Treasury shall break up entities included
12 on the Too Big To Fail List, so that their failure would
13 no longer cause a catastrophic effect on the United States
14 or global economy without a taxpayer bailout.

15 SEC. 4. DEFINITION.16 For purposes of this Act, the term ‘‘Too Big to Fail’’
17 means any entity that has grown so large that its failure
18 would have a catastrophic effect on the stability of either
19 the financial system or the United States economy without
20 substantial Government assistance.

TEPCO is once again under fire this week, after two separate leaks were reported in underground tanks designed to hold radioactive water used to cool reactors. On April 5, TEPCO reported that 120 tons (almost 29,000 gallons or nearly 110,000 liters) of highly radioactive water had leaked from tank #2, which is approximately the size of several football fields and holds 13,000 tons of water. There are seven tanks at the facility.

Experts are now raising concerns that all seven underground tanks, which are all constructed similarly, may be at risk of leaking. Some have charged TEPCO with trying to save money by cutting corners and digging what are essentially storage pits, rather than building more expensive steel-reinforced tanks.

An unsettling trend appears to be underway in Arizona: the use of private prison employees in law enforcement operations.
Vista Grande High School Principal Tim Hamilton ordered the school -- with a student population of 1,776 -- on "lock down," kicking off the first "drug sweep" in the school's four-year history. According to Hamilton, "lock down" is a state in which, "everybody is locked in the room they are in, and nobody leaves -- nobody leaves the school, nobody comes into the school."

While such "drug sweeps" have become a routine matter in many of the nation's schools, along with the use of metal detectors and zero-tolerance policies, one feature of this raid was unusual. According to Casa Grande Police Department (CGPD) Public Information Officer Thomas Anderson,

four "law enforcement agencies" took part in the operation: CGPD (which served as the lead agency and operation coordinator), the Arizona Department of Public Safety, the Gila River Indian Community Police Department, and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).

It is the involvement of CCA -- the nation's largest private, for-profit prison corporation -- that causes this high school "drug sweep" to stand out as unusual; CCA is not, despite CGPD's evident opinion to the contrary, a law enforcement agency.

"To invite for-profit prison guards to conduct law enforcement actions in a high school is perhaps the most direct expression of the 'schools-to-prison pipeline' I've ever seen," said Caroline Isaacs, program director of the Tucson office of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker social justice organization that advocates for criminal justice reform.

Cypriot savers are furious with their banks, but staff at the now-defunct Laiki Bank have been affected worse than most. Many borrowed money to buy shares in the bank - now worthless - and fear losing both their jobs and their pensions.

Before the bank closed, the employees were pressured to buy shares in the bank, with the implication their job depended on it.
So they borrowed money to buy the shares, and were pressured not to sell them as the economy got worse.

"The director called us into a small conference room, and told us that it would not be… well, it would not look good on our resume if we sold those shares," she says.

Voskou later found that this same director sold his shares shortly after that conversation.

Now they still have to pay for the loans.

the laid off workers have all their pension money in the now defunct bank, too.